No Business Reengineering Without Leadership Transformation

There is a growing regional call for good governance and greater transparency. This has created an urgent need for governments as well private sector and civil society organizations to adopt new models for more effective and efficient delivery of services. This need is compounded by the continued global economic volatility and the rapid pace of technologically driven social change.

Against this backdrop, the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis has endorsed the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to drive national competitiveness and ensure efficient delivery of more secure and transparent government services. The government of the small, twin-island Caribbean state has also recognized that process re-engineering is a prerequisite for automation of the delivery of government services.

Business processes must be redesigned with a view to removing bottlenecks arcane procedures, and systemic inefficiencies. However, attention to leadership has been identified as a prerequisite to meaningful process re-design.

In view of this, the Governance ICT Division selected Congress Global Consulting (CGC), to conduct a national workshop on business process re-engineering, which commenced in the capital city of Basseterre, this week. CGC is a UK-based firm that specializes in leadership development and organizational transformation. CGC’s Caribbean office is based in Trinidad and Tobago.

Titled ‘Business Process Re-engineering and Change Management: the Leadership Imperative’, the five-day workshop opened on 20 June with opening remarks from Christopher Herbert, Acting Director of the National ICT Centre, and Ernest King, CGC Executive Director, Institutional Transformation.

“CGC was selected because of its unique focus on values-based nations development and leadership driven change,” Herbert stated in his opening remarks.

The workshop, conducted by King, a leadership-development specialist, Bevil Wooding, an international ICT expert, and Camille Wooding, a management consultant, targeted senior officers and executives from the public and private sectors. According to Mr. King, “The workshop is specially tailored to help national leaders translate reform policies and programs into concrete action plans with a leadership focused re-engineering component.”

“In implementing ICT-based development, organizations sometimes make the mistake of focusing on the ‘ICT’ and forgetting about the ‘development’. We are seeking to introduce considerations that are relevant to the St Kitts Nevis context. It is important that concepts discussed in this workshop take into account the various challenges we face in the Federation and the wider Caribbean,” Mr. Wooding added.

Mr. King stated, “At the end of the day, BPR is about managing people as well as processes. This workshop focuses on the role of leadership in effecting and managing change. We are also examining proven techniques and tools that the participants can use to conduct leadership driven BPR initiatives in their organizations.’

Over twenty-five participants representing the public and private sectors are attending the five day workshop, held at the National ICT Centre in Basseterre, St Kitts.